Amy Berg Partnering With Nate Parker for Doc About the “Black Male Crisis”

Amy Berg Partnering With Nate Parker for Doc About the "Black Male Crisis"

Oscar-nominated documentarian Amy Berg has built a career on exposing injustice. Her 2006 film Deliver Us From Evil investigated a Catholic priest who admitted to molesting or raping 25 children, and her 2012 doc West of Memphis recounted how three teenagers were wrongfully convicted of killing a group of 8-year-olds due to police incompetence. Berg’s most recent film, An Open Secret, premiered at DOC NYC and has yet to find distribution because of its acutely sensitive topic: the sexual predation of young male actors by powerful figures within the film industry.

But Berg hasn’t let An Open Secret‘s purgatory status slow her down. She’s listed as a director in five upcoming projects, including American Race, described on its Indiegogo page as “a film on the black male crisis.” With narrator Nate Parker (Beyond the Lights), Berg will explore the deaths of unarmed black citizens by police, which take place every 28 hours in America according to their pitch video (see below).

Berg and her team began shooting in Ferguson this past August. Here is their description of the film:

In response to the growing problem of racial disparity due to the ongoing dehumanization of black men, actor and activist Nate Parker is setting out on a journey of investigation. He will venture into black communities to speak to various stakeholders about the crisis facing these men. Through the examination of specific cases, Nate will create relevant and responsive discourse with the intention of mining strong and tangible solutions to combat this ever-growing crisis. We will also highlight existing programs that are creating effective and sustainable counter action to the crisis.

The crisis itself will be brought forward and represented through interviews, news excerpts and historical footage. We find it extremely vital to recognize that the racial climate we exist in today is symptomatic of a larger problem that was established centuries ago. We will create a visual timeline of a systemic conditioning that will provide the viewer proper context for post Civil Rights America, where – in truth – very little has changed from times long past.